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Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane - WSJ.com
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December 7, 2007
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JET BLUES
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Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane

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December 7, 2007
PAGE ONE
DOW JONES REPRINTS
This copy is for your personal,non-commercial use only. To orderpresentation-ready copies fordistribution to your colleagues,clients or customers, use the OrderReprints tool at the bottom of anyarticle or visit:www.djreprints.com.ãSee a sample reprint in PDFformat.ãOrder a reprint of this article now.
ET BLUES
Boeing Scrambles to RepairProblems With New Plane
Layers of OutsourcingSlow 787 Production;'Hostage to Suppliers'
By J. LYNN LUNSFORD
December 7, 2007
EVERETT, Wash. -- On Tuesday,
Boeing
Co. will give Wall Streeta progress report on its 787 Dreamliner, as it scrambles to overcome a six-month delay inproducing the new jet. A look inside the project reveals that the mess stems from one of its mainselling points to investors -- global outsourcing.When the Chicago aerospace giant set out four years ago to build the fuel-sipping jet, it figuredthe chief risk lay in perfecting a process to build much of the plane from carbon-fiber plasticinstead of aluminum. Boeing focused so hard on getting the science right that it didn't grasp thesignificance of another big change: The 787 is the first jet in Boeing's 91-year history designedlargely by other companies.To lower the $10 billion or so it would cost to develop theplane solo, Boeing authorized a team of parts suppliers to design and build major sections of the craft, which it planned to snap together atits Seattle-area factory. But outsourcing so much responsibility has turned out to be far moredifficult than anticipated.The supplier problems ranged from language barriers to snafus that erupted when somecontractors themselves outsourced chunks of work. An Italian company struggled for months togain approval to build a fuselage factory on the site of an ancient olive grove. The first Dreamlinerto show up at Boeing's factory was missing tens of thousands of parts, Boeing said.Today, the Dreamliner is at least six months late, and the goal of delivering 109 planes by the endof 2009 is threatened. Rather than being well into flight tests, Boeing is rushing to get the firstplanes airborne while it helps suppliers around the world bring their factories up to speed.Boeing has said the delays have affected 19 of the 52 airlines that have ordered the 787, some of which were counting on using their planes during the 2008 Summer Olympics. If delays mount,the company could face millions of dollars in penalty payments to customers, as well as pressurefrom suppliers, many of which have agreed not to be paid until planes get delivered.The missteps underscore the hazards and limits of outsourcing -- especially with a brand-newairplane, the most complex machine in mass production. Lessons that Boeing is learning the hardway could end up helping rival Airbus, a unit of
European Aeronautic Defence & Space
Co.Page 1of 6Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane -WSJ.com12/7/2007http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119698754167616531.html
Airbus has said it plans to use a similar model of global suppliers to build a competing plane thatshould be ready in about five years.Boeing overestimated the ability of suppliers to handle tasks that its own designers and engineersknow how to do almost intuitively after decades of building jets. Program managers thought theyhad adequate oversight of suppliers but learned later that the company was in the dark when itcame to many under-the-radar details. In addition to oversight, you need insight into what's actually going on in those factories, saysScott Carson, the president of Boeing's CommercialAirplanes unit. Had we had adequate insight,we could have helped our suppliers understand the challenges. The 787 is a hit with airlines. Boeing has 762 orders from 52 carriers forthe plane, which will carry between 225 and 300 passengers. Thecombination of lightweight materials and fuel-efficient engines is expectedto make it 20% cheaper tofly and a third less costly to maintain than older jets. Boeing says ithas sold out of delivery slots until almost 2014, makingit critical to get the jet into production without further setbacks.Boeing set out to bring the plane to market in just over four years, twoyears less time than such projects have taken in the past. It has respondedto bottlenecks by throwing both money and people at them, parachuting indozens or hundreds of its own employees to attack problems at plants inItaly, Japan and South Carolina. Boeing said in September that it had setaside nearly $2 billion in additional research-and-development money forincreasing costs associated with the delays.The plan calls for suppliers to ship mostly completed fuselage sections, already stuffed withwiring and other systems, to Boeing facilities around Seattle so they could be put together in asfew as three days. Existing production methods can keep a plane the size of the Dreamliner in thefinal-assembly area for a month.But many of these handpicked suppliers, instead of using their own engineers to do the designwork, farmed out this key task to even-smaller companies. Some of those ended up overloadingthemselves with work from multiple 787 suppliers, Boeing says.The company says it never intended for its suppliers to outsource key tasks such as engineering,but that the situation seemed manageable at the time. We tended to say, 'They know how to runtheir businesses,' says a Boeing executive familiar with the company's thinking. Now Boeing is hostage to the suppliers, and there's very little they can do about it, says TomWroblewski, president in the Seattle region for the International Association of Machinists andAerospace Workers, which was critical of all the outsourcing.Despite the start-up problems, Boeing and its suppliers still say they believe this new method of developing planes is the model for future projects. Once the production line is running smoothly,they argue, it will be more efficient and profitable than existing construction methods.The companies brought in to design and supply the 787 circle the globe. Vought AircraftIndustries Inc., based in Dallas, makes the rear fuselage section at a factory in Charleston, S.C.Alenia Aeronautica produces the middle fuselage sections and horizontal tailpieces in Grottaglie,Italy. Vought and Alenia, which is a unit of Italy's
Finmeccanica
SA, formed a venture to attachtheir sections at a new facility in Charleston.Page 2of 6Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane -WSJ.com12/7/2007http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119698754167616531.html
Three Japanese heavy-industry companies, Fuji, Kawasaki andMitsubishi, produce the newplane's elegantly swooped wing. Spirit Aerosystems Inc., a former Boeing facility now owned byToronto-based
Onex
Corp., is responsible for the 43-foot-long nose section.All of these bulky pieces are shipped to Everett for final assembly, aboard heavily modifiedBoeing 747s that Boeing calls Dreamlifters. Early optimism about the new process was quickly undercut. Several suppliers say Boeing wasthree to eight months late in giving them final specifications for structures and systems. Boeingsays its engineers were trying to cram as much technology into the plane as possible withoutmaking it too heavy.Besides designing their sections of the plane, the structure suppliers had to build cavernousfactories to house the giant carbon-tape applicators and ovens that are used in the newmanufacturing process.In Grottaglie,Alenia chose tobuild its factory ona 300-year-oldolive grove. Beforeit could build, itfaced months of haggling and had toagree to replant thetrees elsewhere.Alenia was in catch-up modefrom the get-go, says a Boeingofficial.Compounding theproblems: TheItalians' first coupleof test-fuselagesections didn't meetquality standards.One of the worstproblems croppedup at Vought, alongtime Boeingsupplier. Its jobwas to build therear section of thefuselage. Voughtretained designresponsibility forthe complicatedcarbon-fiber exterior, but it hired Israeli Aerospace Industries Ltd., of Tel Aviv, to design andbuild the section's floor. Although relatively simple, the task involved fabricating and assemblingmore than 6,000 components, from lightweight beams to tiny brackets.Page 3of 6Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane -WSJ.com12/7/2007http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119698754167616531.html
Problems arose in getting many of the items to conform to a tight set of engineering tolerances setby Boeing. Normally, this could be addressed by taking each part through a review processinvolving a series of sign-offs that typically generate a stack of paperwork approaching an inchthick per part.But Israeli Aerospace was halfway across the world and in the third rung of the new bureaucraticladder. The sign-off process would have required each document to travel multiple times betweenIsrael, Charleston and Seattle. When it became apparent that this was threatening Vought's abilityto deliver its fuselage section, teams of experts from Boeing and Vought were sent to Tel Aviv towalk each part through the process.The snafu led Vought to replace its executivein charge of 787 work, in part because angry Boeingmanagers believed they had been misled about how serious the situation was.Conceding the company's travails on the Dreamliner, VoughtChief Executive Elmer Doty said ona recent conference call with investors: I don't think you need rumors to assume we are amongthe riskiest, if not the riskiest, of suppliers who make fuselage sections. He said Vought hadasked for help and was pleased Boeing recently assigned a top manufacturing expert to help it getup to full production.Not until the first Dreamliner was unveiled in July did Boeing realize the magnitude of itstroubles. In an effort to meet the rollout target for the 787 of 7/8/07, Boeing told suppliers to shippartly completed sections to its final-assembly bay in Everett.Boeing believed that the first plane's biggest problem was a shortage of specialized nuts and boltsneeded to put it together. The industry-wide shortage was worse on the Dreamliner because itrequired dozens of new fasteners not used on other planes. At the rollout ceremony, thousands of employees and invited guests milled around beneath a Dreamliner that had more than 1,000temporary fasteners embedded under its shiny coat of Boeing blue and white paint.When mechanics later opened boxes and crates accompanying the fuselage sections, they foundthem filled with thousands of brackets, clips, wires and other items that already should have beeninstalled. In some cases, officials say, components came with no paperwork at all, or assemblyinstructions written in Italian, requiring translation.Boeing officials thought they could work through this unexpected twist in a couple of weeks.Instead, they had to put the plane up on jacks and remove its engines and tail to get to tight spots.On Sept. 6, Boeing said the problems had forced it to delay the Dreamliner's first test flight byfour months. But officials remained optimistic that they could deliver the first plane on time toJapan's
All Nippon Airways
Co. in May.A month later, though, the first plane was still on jacks, and Boeing was in the midst of findingout that its suppliers' underlying problems were worse than expected. During a meeting with hisDreamliner managers on Oct. 4., Mr. Carson, Boeing's president of commercial airplanes,concluded there was no way to get the first plane delivered on time.He called Boeing Chief Executive Jim McNerney at the company's corporate offices in Chicago.Mr. McNerney flew to Seattle the following Monday for a detailed briefing. That Wednesday, thetwo announced that the first airplane delivery was being pushed back until November orDecember of 2008.A few days later, they replaced Mike Bair, the visionary executive whoPage 4of 6Boeing Scrambles to Repair Problems With New Plane -WSJ.com12/7/2007http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB119698754167616531.html

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